Middlesex

tune of Middlesex. At once comes to mind a scene in a petty sessions court, where it was a certain lawyer's

the laugh raised by his announcement: "I appear for the prisoner, your worships!" Clients must reckon with such awkward

jury-bamboozling argumentation for whichever party may be first to put a fee in their slot. The literary conscience being less elastic, I have nothing for it but to acknowledge that, in the heat of advocacy for Surrey, I was led into speaking with too little respect of its neighbour across the Thames. As for my witness, counsel on the other side might easily show that he had an itch for venting random abuse, that on occasion he vilipended the fairest parts of his beloved Surrey, and that he lived in the flattest and tamest corner of the slandered county. As for myself, casting off the metaphor of wig and gown,

rdens and football fields, of which the largest stretch extends on the west side of London. Yet here, too, one is seldom out of sight of some pleasant rise, some oasis of park wood, some straggling line of hedgerow timber; and even that most dreary edge of the county, the marshlands of the Lea, is overlooked by the heights of Clapton and Enfield. The general character is a gently undulating surface, swel

d as it is with suburbs and villages, farms and factories, Middlesex is not so well off as Surrey for good old independent towns, and for capital has to content itself with the shabby squalor of Brentford. London seems to have cast its shadow on this side so as to stunt the growth of puny boroughs. Another contrast between the two counties is in shape, Surrey being, on the whole, more compactly contained than its sprawling ne

re Vale" had a name for the best wheat in England to make flour for the royal larder. Yet the supply of London Haymarkets and Covent Gardens has not blighted its most co

AVENUE, HA

nd clearings as have left their traces on Ludgate Hill and Brockley Hill at either end. For a good time back the advantages of ornamental planting have been liberally bestowed on a shire where De

s more at home on the north side of the Thames, not a few of them, indeed, born within the sound of Bow Bells. Milton, Pope, Addison, Johnson, Goldsmith, Gray, Keats, Byron, Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, Lamb-such are the shades that at once come to mind as haunting this countryside. Even within the pre

mperance was the age come of building about a city by far too disproportionate already to the nation." Half a century later Mary Lamb could speak of Dalston as "quite countrified," where her brother, in his half-serious way, boasted of walks to such "romantic" scenes as Hackney and Tottenham. When, beyond the northern heights, a wayfarer of our generation thinks to have left the smoky Babylon behind him, he finds it breaking out

the ground is let to a cricket or football club, and that is more like to be a sign of the doom close at hand. These youthful athletes hold their playgrounds on more precarious tenure than the richer amateurs of golf; then a season comes when the gates are left open, the fences fall in gaps, the weather-stained notices to trespassers stand in idle decay, and the local urchinry press in to sport at will, no longer snatching a fearful joy. For weeks, months, the field lies waste, uncared for, sodden and sorry, trampled to flaws of bareness, with patches of rank weeds and unsavoury rubbish

mes, while a fourth may invoke famous writers or heroes of the hour, and it saves trouble when some local landmark can be pressed into service as godfather. Soon, over broken waves of grass, emerge the brick reefs wrought by trades-union zoophytes. The rows of houses rise like an exhalation, story on story. Lath and plaster, jousts and beams, stucco, slates take their place as if by hey presto! and where you walk

d be made to meet. And as these young households settle down, so does the colony clear up its litter. Now the dovetailed dwellings may be numbered, that at first, perhaps, stood precariously independent as "Honeymoon Cottage" or what not, six-roomed "Chatsworths," two-storied "Abbotsfords," veritable "De Vere Mansions," housing a dozen Smiths and Browns. Gaps are filled, rough edges are rounded

ave to look out for perambulators. And ah! at times there comes a gloomier van to doors that must open for grief as well as for joy; then poor comfort it is to aching hearts if their dear ones have not so far to travel to that freshly laid-out cemetery that makes such a weary journey from t

n each shade of Anglicanism, bring their services within easy reach of any householder; and chapels of various denominations follow suit, from tin little Bethels to imitation Gothic towers and Vandal spires. Even before the perambulators peeped out on fine days, doctors' lamps and door-plates began to shine at corners not taken up by the flare of a public-house. Babels of school buildings rise above private roofs. Galaxies of shops break out along the main thoroughfares, promoted from "Lanes" to "High Roads" or "Broadways"; and ere their fronts have grown dingy, their windows glow on red and green omnibuses plying to some

this time our loving couple that were among its oldest inhabitants may no longer appear in the local directory. Have they prospered in the world, we must look fo

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; its million hands seize upon the fruits, the corn, the gold, the oil, and wine of every zone." Its choice suburbs, indeed, may be considered as stretching out to the Riviera, the Swiss Lakes, or the Bohemian Forest. But, as yet, the county in which the greatest of modern cities chiefly lies has a remnant of rustic charms it cannot be too coy of displaying to the cosmopolitan

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l on the Underground Railway. These speedy wayfarers-"machines themselves, and governed by a clock"-go in the traces of a road, blinkered by its rows of suburban houses, and ready to drop for fatigue when taken out of the shafts of pace-making and r

which have been obliterated, but many are guarded more carefully than ever now that the sons of Mammon or of Nimrod would fain enclose them against the like of me. In taking these quiet byways between bustling highroads, I cannot help observing how few persons one meets, and these few-if not whispering lovers, for whom their

We never wasted a holiday in applauding the feats of professional champions, and our wholesome spring, surely, had a better chance of a lusty winter. I sometimes go out a country ramble with a contemporary who has sons brought up at schools that make a religion of athletics; then we have to leave his young hopefuls behind, lest they should be a clog to our gouty feet. I never-m

uch gone astray after golf, which is simply an intermittent walk, attended with considerable expense, made in the unprofitable and unprofited society of caddies, and spoiled at every turn by the anxiety of driving little balls into ugly holes with instruments which a scientif

idden charms. As for matters of history, statistics, geology, and so forth, I refer him to the tomes in which I should have to look for such information, only advising him that a certain encyclop?dia must not be trusted in its flattering of Middlesex soil as "mainly gravelly." Let him not go by that authority when choosing his boots for a tramp here. Nor should they be seven-leagued boots, as thus, in every direction, their first stride wo